Memphis City Schools to sign pact for $90 million from Gates Foundation

Board OK expected today for teacher plan

The city school board is expected to sign an agreement today with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will funnel more than $90 million to Memphis for a plan to change how teachers are hired, placed, evaluated and retained.

The Gates Foundation will confirm the winners of its education grants in a teleconference Thursday morning.

The Memphis school district is one of the school systems in four cities expecting approval.

Boards of education in Hillsborough County, Fla. (Tampa); Pittsburgh; and a consortium of charter schools in Los Angeles signed agreements with the foundation this week. The Memphis Board of Education has scheduled a meeting for 4:30 p.m. today to vote on a contract.

If Memphis signs the document, Gates money to improve teacher effectiveness will flow twice a year over seven years from the Seattle-based foundation to the newly formed Memphis City School Foundation, headed by Kim Wirth, executive director of the International Paper Foundation.

While Gates will fund the bulk of the project, the district must contribute $36 million. About $3 million a year -- $20 million over seven years -- must come from community philanthropists.

Supt. Kriner Cash and Gates officials are adamant that the work, which includes raising the bar for tenure and basing teachers' pay partly on student performance, requires a community buy-in.

"We have to do it all together," Cash said. "MCS wants to be the lead, but we need other partners."

The district estimates it will cost $46 million a year to sustain the effort after the seven-year test, including $35 million more annually in teacher salaries.

Since 2000, the $29 billion foundation headed by Bill Gates -- a co-founder of Microsoft and No. 1 on Forbes magazine's list of the richest people in the world -- has invested $2 billion in school reform, most of it in American high schools, and another $2 billion in student scholarships.

Now, it is giving about $500 million nationally to research teacher quality. In Tampa, the school board Tuesday approved a $100 million agreement, with $100 million in matching funds from Hillsborough County.

The foundation hopes an investment in Memphis will extend benefits across Tennessee, one of the lowest-ranking states for student achievement.

The foundation gave $250,000 to Tennessee this fall to help the state craft a proposal to get some of the $4.5 billion in Race to the Top stimulus dollars. The Obama administration will award money over two years to a handful of states embarking on innovative work in education.

Last spring, dozens of school districts submitted proposals to Gates. Cash says the foundation was confident the plans created by the four semifinalists could be sustained over time and were not a "flash in the pan."

"They now want to invite these four districts for a deep, multiyear partnership for groundbreaking work," Cash said.

"It has never been done before."

Gates grant

The gift of more than $90 million from Gates will fund plans to improve teacher effectiveness, including raising the bar for tenure and paying $6,000 incentives for high quality new teachers who stay at least four years.

Memphis is one of two semifinalist cities that received Gates money this fall to make videos of teachers at work. That project is being led by Harvard researcher and Gates associate Tom Kane.